Berklee VP for student affairs/Scotland fan Larry Bethune covers the TransAtlantic Seaway Music Collaboration’s first trip to Glasgow, with help from Scottish culture promoter David Christie… and actually for this spell Larry delegates his blogging responsibilities to musician Hamish Napier.

DAYS 3+4—THU 27–FRI 28 JAN “Jamming for their supper”

Hamish Napier:

Following the Berklee guys’ rehearsals in the piping centre at the beginning of the week, they joined the Hamish Napier Quintet for rehearsals at the Glasgow Berkeley rehearsal studios (a coincidence with the name there, but the largest rehearsal studio complex in the UK nonetheless!). The band, featuring me on vocals and vintage Wurlitzer piano, and a mean rhythm section of bass, guitar and drums, would also include fiddle, concertina and sax for their imminent performance at Glasgow City Hall’s for their Celtic Connections debut. The Berklee gang added oodles of awesome string madness to the already giant sound of the group, with banjo, mandolin, guitar and 3 fiddles. After only a very short while the guys had the tunes down and had already begun improvising!

On Friday, I met up with Hannah Read at an Emily Smith gig in the Glasgow Royal Concert Hall as we will be performing with her this summer at festivals. Afterwards we go straight downstairs to my brother, and world-class singer/songwriter, Findlay Napier’s infamous “Late Night Sessions” for a few beers and to take in the Cape Breton monster musicians doing their thing on the stage there.

David C.:

For the next two days, members of the group were heard “jamming for their supper” in some of Glasgow’s finest watering holes and others got over to Edinburgh to take in the sites and sample the delights of UNESCO’s “City of Literature.” Then its on to Saturday’s big concert at 1 p.m. in the Strathclyde Suite of the Royal Concert Hall, which will also feature some of Scotland’s brightest up-and-coming musical stars. I tell everyone, “This will be a MUST SEE event and I hope it sells out, because the audience is in for a real treat.”

The Transatlantic Seaway Music Collaboration is a production involving students, faculty, and alumni of the Berklee College of Music in Boston, Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama, and Strathclyde University in Glasgow, with support from the City of Glasgow UNESCO City of Music.